


Why He Always Wears Gloves

by ModernWizard



Series: Alison Wonderland [3]
Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005), Doctor Who: Scream of the Shalka
Genre: A much happier 'verse than The Accidental Ambassador in which no one is a shit, Ace Master, Alison and the Doctor are friends but not as close as her and the Master, Alison and the Master are friends, Alison and the Stylist are friends -- hooray for Time Dorks of color!, Asexual Character, Asexual Doctor, Asexual Master, But not all three of them together D: !!, Consent, Consent Issues, Disabled Character, Disabled Character of Color, Enthusiastic Consent, Explicit Consent, Female Character of Color, Kinky Alison, Kinky Doctor, Kinky Master, LGBTQ Character of Color, LGBTQ Female Character of Color, Nonbinary Character, Nonbinary Doctor, ace doctor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-14
Updated: 2017-05-14
Packaged: 2018-10-31 18:20:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,118
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10904838
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ModernWizard/pseuds/ModernWizard
Summary: Alison finds out why the Doctor's inevitable spouse, whom she calls the Magister, always wears gloves. Emily Dickinson's pain fetish, the personification of entropy, consensual housekeeping, eyebrow construction, and the rake handle in his arm also come up. You know -- just your everyday, run-of-the-mill chat between a human being and an evil alien super-powered robot.





	Why He Always Wears Gloves

**Author's Note:**

> My version of the Shalka Master is basically electro Delgado, which means that, like the source material, he almost always has his hands covered. Now we know why.
> 
> You do not have to be familiar with any of the other works in this series to understand this vignette.

Deep in _The Complete Works of Emily Dickinson_ , Alison wends toward the kitchen. Ever since learning that this poet is one of the Doctor’s go-to sources for words in which they might express their emotions and internal conflicts, Alison figures that she might as well study up.

 

Wow. Who knew Dickinson was so...excruciating? Alison always thought that she was a nature poet, with all the flowers and the hills and the snow and such, but yeah… No. Apparently she’s also really into suffering, funerals, and insanity. Not as much as she’s into bees [she has a real bee fetish], but enough so that Alison has to frequently slow down whenever she encounters yet another exquisite description of misery.

 

 _“Ah, Necromany Sweet! / Ah, Wizard Erudite!”_ she reads aloud. “Oooh, this is great. Too bad this isn’t an actual invocation.” Memorizing the two clipped verses in a few seconds, Alison then tilts back her head and adjures the ceiling in a sonorous voice:

 

_“Ah, Necromancy Sweet!_

_Ah, Wizard Erudite!_

_Teach me the skill_

 

_That I instil the pain_

_Surgeons assuage in vain,_

_Nor Herb of all the plain_

_Can -- “_

 

She kicks something about foot-level, bumps into something about knee-level, and skids on something slippery. Dickinson goes flying, and so does Alison.

 

She and her book don’t fall too far, though, as both are caught in mid-career. “You really shouldn’t recite incantations so inattentively, my dear, lest you trip and suffer the calamity of your spell yourself,” says a voice trying hard to be deadpan, but not fully concealing the suppressed amusement.

 

It is, of course, the Magister. He’s the only one on the ship who’d notice if Alison walked into him. The Doctor would be so busy staring at something on the ground -- probably watching grass grow, literally -- that they wouldn’t even budge. “Oops. Sorry about that.” She tries to find her footing, but the surface remains slick. “Uh, why were you on the floor anyway?”

 

“Well, if you hadn’t been so absorbed in your spells of torture, you might have noticed that I was cleaning.” Nodding sideways, he indicates a mop, a bucket, a scrub brush, and various rags, from all of which emanate the piercing smell of hydrogen peroxide.

 

Taking in the supplies, Alison realizes that she’s in the general vicinity of her bedroom suite, just a few paces down from her door, actually. Wasn’t this the spot where she spilled a cup of dirty water a day or so ago? “Oh shit. You clean?”

 

He hands back her book. “Indeed. I suppose it is not truly necessary, since this ship is largely self-maintaining. I, however, find it a soothing discipline. Besides, some of us,” he says with a glare at nothing in particular, “aren’t so slovenly and thus prefer a more sanitary environment.”

 

“Oh fuck.” Alison leans against the wall. “I’m so sorry about that. I was working on a doll updo the other day. I wanted to see if I could get it in place with white glue, so I diluted a bunch with water and ran it through her hair. And it came out great -- it dried all clear, and now her hair looks like a wedding cake, which is exactly what I was going for. But I was taking it back to my room -- the extra glue, I mean -- to dump it down the sink, and I dropped it, and it went splashing everywhere. And I didn’t mean to spill it, and I tried to clean it up -- really I did. I spent two hours on it, and I thought I had gotten up all the little sticky bits, but I guess I hadn’t, and I’m really sorry you had to clean up after me, and I promise I’ll never do it again, and please don’t yell.”

 

“Hold fast!” He raises his hand. “My dear,” he says, his voice softening from its urgency, “I never meant to imply that you were the disheveled one. We both know that it is to that old fool of a Doctor to whom the honor must be granted.”

 

“Oh. Um, yeah. Sorry for assuming -- “ Alison bites off that apology. What the fuck is wrong with her? She has to stop saying sorry for every little thing.

 

“No matter. It is not your habits that increase the chaos hereabouts.” He continues in doleful tones: “Everyday that old quack transports at least a flower pot’s worth of dirt, all ingrained in their clothes, in from their jungle, and everyday I sterilize in their wake. However, I have realized by now that I am but waging a futile battle against the personification of universal entropy.” Dropping his head, the Magister sighs as if watching the burial of a beloved family member.

 

“Lovable entropy, though,” says Alison with a giggle.

 

“Let me tell you how much I adore removing dirt from in between tiles with a toothbrush.” He rolls his eyes.

 

Alison takes stock of the situation again. “Is this consensual housecleaning?” She grew up hearing stories from her mum about how she had worked in white people’s houses to earn extra money; then she actually did the same herself for one summer. It was actually scrubbing the underside of the toilet bowl lip with a repurposed toothbrush that made her realize how queasy she felt about her employers. She has a very hard time understanding how someone could do such things voluntarily, especially if they have to get on their knees to do so.

 

“It is. Once Anima,” he says, using Alison’s name for the Doctor’s TARDIS, “determined that my ministrations did _not_ suggest that her own maintenance routines were substandard, she let me do as I pleased.”

 

“No, I meant more like you and the Doctor. In my experience, housecleaning is a bullshit power play that can sometimes be a race thing. And I know you and the Doctor aren’t the same color, and it could be that I’m just projecting because I have no idea really what goes on over on Gallifrey, in which case I’m sorry, and I didn’t -- “

 

“My dearest Domina -- do please stop apologizing!” The Magister’s eyebrows go up halfway upon his heavily wrinkled forehead. Speaking of colors, he’s deep dark tan mixed with some bronze, while the Doctor is pale white, weather-bleached, and Alison’s warm middling brown with light red flushes on her cheeks. “I assure you -- there is no duress here. It is _aut regnere aut servire_ by which I live -- remember?” _Either rule or serve._ “Not _aut regnere aut servire aut esse humiliatus.” Not either rule or serve or be humiliated._

 

“Okay.” Alison nods. “Just checking.”

 

One eyebrow up, he smiles. “Have I now a sentinel then who will keep me from harm?”

 

“Yes. Get used to it.” Alison hugs him around the waist. “Gah, you smell like bleach!” She jumps back at the tart, pungent odor. “Have you been marinating in it or something?”

 

“I have merely been cleaning most of the morning. I suppose I have grown inured to the scent.” Inspecting his current set of black leather gloves, he flares his nostrils. “Well, these are bound for the rag bin.”

 

“Wait -- you wore those for cleaning?” Alison does eyebrow maneuvers of her own. Along with the entirely black, narrowly cut, finely tailored suit that he wears everyday, he has equally expensive-looking gloves to match. They remind her of old-fashioned driving gloves, only thinner and softer in material. If she had some like that, she’d be too scared to ever put them on, but apparently he must have drawers full of identical pairs.

 

“I always wear them.”

 

Yeah, come to think of it, Alison has never seen him without them. “Why?”

 

He beckons her closer. “Come. I presume this shall not disturb you, as you barely blinked when I first unhinged my faceplate for you.”

 

Drawing near, Alison watches closely as he takes off his gloves. He has no skin beneath them. He has hands, of course, with plastic muscles and metal bones and various color-coded wires knit throughout, but unprotected by an artificial epidermis. “Oh!” She raises her eyes to his. “Is that why you always wear the same thing? Your clothes are like...part of you, part of your body?”

 

“Dear me, no!” He laughs. “I have a full integument everywhere save here.” He holds up his stripped hands. “The Doctor,” he says with a sigh and a shake of the head, “began my construction, as they have told me, with _the most important parts first.”_

 

“Your brain?” Alison guesses.

 

“Well, yes, they were quite particular about my cerebral hardware, but initially they were _most_ intent on recreating an accurate likeness. I am told that the eyebrows alone apparently took two full weeks of experimentation. Of course, I then had to endure six months of various adjustments thereunto, but I think the results speak for themselves.” He wiggles the results ostentatiously.

 

Alison grins at him. He has the liveliest, most responsive, most face-pulling set of features that she has ever seen. When she first met him, she, instantly recognizing a fellow control freak of the highest order, assumed that he managed his expressions as carefully as she her tears. Not a chance. Watching him, whether he’s speaking or silent, is like watching one of those sped-up films of time passing in a single scene; the weather flickers by, and the incessant movement blends into a sort of dance.

 

“Those are definitely the best engineered eyebrows I’ve ever come across,” she assures him. “But then...are you saying that they didn’t consider your hands that important? How did they think you were going to grab them by the cravat, yank them down to eye level, and order them around -- with your teeth?”

 

The Magister chuckles. “I have not yet told you the full story. Though they initially undertook their work with the greatest of meticulousness, they did not maintain such attention to detail throughout. As you might well guess, things grew more...improvisational as time wore on. For example, my right radius,” he says, flipping his forearm over and back, “is a rake handle, and I know that some of the padding around the electronics in my chest cavity comes from old pairs of their foam gardening clogs. Since they were clearly using whatever supplies they had to hand, I am but mildly surprised that they did not make my beard out of moss.”

 

Alison’s eyes go round. “Oh! They made you out of the things they loved the best. They basically made you out of themselves.” She herself can’t imagine building a person out of the things that she loves so much that they’re basically extensions of herself. Then she’d have to give up her first Latin grammar and all her fairy tales and the mummy she made out of a fashion doll when she was little and all those little people whose straight boring hair she’d turned into kinky, curly wonders and… Yeah, no -- that’s not happening anytime soon.

 

Besides, it’s dangerous to give up yourself to someone. If you do that, then you lose power; you lose self-mastery. You’re no longer invulnerable, and you can’t rightly claim, _“I am the master of my fate; / I am the captain of my soul.”_ It’s hesitations like these that make her think that, as much as the two Time Dorks obviously love each other and make each other happy, it can’t be the universe’s healthiest relationship.

 

“By the time they approached my completion,” the Magister is saying, “the old fool got so excited to have a Master again that they skipped over a few minor details and powered me up anyway.”

 

“Uh huh,” says Alison. “Skin: the minor detail. And you didn’t ask them to finish you?”

 

“I did -- repeatedly. Their answer was -- and I quote -- _Oh, I’ll get around to it. Besides, you always wore gloves when you first looked like that, so what’s the problem?”_

 

“Spoiler alert,” says Alison. “They never got around to it.” Watching him put his gloves back on, she asks, “And that doesn’t bother you? It doesn’t drive your little control freaky heart to distraction knowing that you’re like unhemmed at the wrist cuffs?”

 

“Most certainly it does. However, I have learned that, when one is under unavoidable house arrest with ambulatory chaos, one would do best to compromise on one’s especially stringent expectations so that they might accord with the inevitable messes of reality.”

 

“Compromise? Pffffft.” Alison puts her arms akimbo. “You just not-so-secretly like it because it’s a constant reminder of how eager the Doctor was to hold you fast.”

 

The Magister, wringing out the mop in the bucket, refuses to answer, which is, of course, all the answer she needs.


End file.
